Space news

NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) assists in the use of crowdsourcing across the federal government. CoECI’s NASA Tournament Lab offers the contract capability to run external crowdsourced challenges on behalf of NASA and other agencies. This three-phase challenge invites geophysicists, sensing specialists, nondestructive testing experts, and creative problem-solvers (including AI/ML practitioners) from […]

Biofilms are communities of microorganisms that stick to one another and also adhere to a nearby surface. They are intricately associated with life on Earth, enabling functions essential to human and plant systems.

NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) assists in the use of crowdsourcing across the federal government. CoECI’s NASA Tournament Lab offers the contract capability to run external crowdsourced challenges on behalf of NASA and other agencies. The Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) is sponsoring a 3-phase prize challenge (managed by yet2) for innovative solutions […]

Eutelsat has ended capacity leases on two Russian spacecraft after one failed in orbit and the other is set to relocate, escaping contracts hit by Western sanctions and the structural decline in TV broadcasts from GEO. The post Eutelsat exits two Russian capacity leases after satellite failure appeared first on SpaceNews.

Early morning sunlight illuminates the western wall of this unnamed crater, leaving deep shadows on the ground and in the interior. The image was taken on August 30, 2023, by LROC (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera). LROC is a system of three cameras and one of the seven instruments aboard NASA’s LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) mission, […]

Read this web article in English here. Unos ocho minutos después del despegue de Artemis II, la nave espacial Orion y su tripulación —los astronautas de la NASA Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover y Christina Koch, junto con el astronauta de la CSA (Agencia Espacial Canadiense) Jeremy Hansen— llegarán al espacio. Este vuelo de prueba de casi 10 días […]

About eight minutes after Artemis II lifts off, the Orion spacecraft and its crew, NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with CSA (Canadian Space Agency) astronaut Jeremy Hansen, will be in space. The approximately 10-day test flight will be packed with activity as the astronauts venture around the Moon and back, […]

A testing replica of the “backbone” of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and a full-scale model of the agency’s Parker Solar Probe are now on permanent display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. “From touching the Sun with Parker Solar Probe to creating humanity’s most powerful […]

From the ESA Blogs.

The Graphics and Visualization Lab (GVIS) at NASA Glenn Research Center creates a variety of immersive visualizations and simulations in support of NASA’s missions, projects, and future innovations. These visual tools help scientists, engineers, and researchers develop new solutions that bring their projects to life. Virtual System Simulations The GVIS Lab prides itself on creating […]

The Graphics and Visualization Lab (GVIS) at NASA Glenn Research Center creates a variety of immersive visualizations and simulations in support of NASA’s missions, projects, and future innovations. These visual tools help scientists, engineers, and researchers develop new solutions that bring their projects to life. Conceptual Visual Designs GVIS creates conceptual visual designs for proposed […]

The Graphics and Visualization Lab (GVIS) at NASA Glenn Research Center creates a variety of immersive visualizations and simulations in support of NASA’s missions, projects, and future innovations. These visual tools help scientists, engineers, and researchers develop new solutions that bring their projects to life. Scientific Visualizations GVIS creates scientific visualizations to explain complex scientific […]

The Graphics and Visualization Lab (GVIS) at NASA Glenn Research Center creates a variety of immersive visualizations and simulations in support for NASA’s missions, projects, and future innovations. These visual tools help scientists, engineers, and researchers develop solutions to bring their projects to life. Test Facility Models GVIS creates visualizations of various NASA test facilities. […]

The exact date when the crew of Space Shuttle Columbia was lost is readily recalled by Patrick Forrester, as it likely would be for any NASA employee in service that Saturday morning when the Shuttle broke up during reentry. Forrester had flown to ISS for the first time in 2001 aboard Discovery in support of […]

Week in images: 09-13 March 2026

Kazakhstan is approaching a moment of strategic truth. It can either become Eurasia’s indispensable broker of space, AI and advanced technology solutions or risk being used as a pawn in a geopolitical power competition it does not control. To be sure, Kazakhstan’s position has complex dependencies: Its historical ties with Russia’s cultural, education and science […] The post Kazakhstan must choose: be Eurasia’s tech broker or become a pawn in the new global space race appeared first on SpaceNews.

Tokyo-headquartered Astroscale Holdings has selected Isar Aerospace to launch its ELSA-M orbital debris removal demonstration mission no earlier than 2028. Isar Aerospace is preparing for the second flight of its two-stage rocket, Spectrum, after the first flight failed shortly after liftoff in early 2025. The launch is currently scheduled for no earlier than 19 March […] The post Isar Aerospace to Launch Astroscale ELSA-M Orbital Debris Removal Mission appeared first on European Spaceflight.

SpaceNews caught up with Rebecca Evernden, the recently appointed Director of the new UK Space Agency, at Space Comm Expo in London. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. SpaceNews: Which do you see as strategic areas for UKSA to focus on to achieve economic growth and national security for the U.K.? Rebecca […] The post Q&A: Rebecca Evernden on UK space strategy appeared first on SpaceNews.

China resumed orbital launch activity Thursday with a pair of missions lifting off from Hainan and Xichang spaceports, launching satellite internet and technology test satellites. The post China ends month-long launch hiatus with separate Guowang and Shiyan-30 satellite missions appeared first on SpaceNews.

The Senate Commerce Committee voted March 12 to send the nomination of Matt Anderson as NASA deputy administrator to the full Senate. The post Senate committee advances NASA deputy administrator nominee appeared first on SpaceNews.

The European Space Agency’s mission to discover Earth-like exoplanets, Plato, is now sealed in the Large Space Simulator (LSS) chamber at ESA’s Test Centre for a series of vital tests under space‑like conditions.

From the ESA Blogs.

From the ESA Blogs.

From the ESA Blogs.

NASA is pushing ahead with an Artemis 2 launch as soon as April 1 after completing repairs to a helium line that required rolling the rocket back from the pad. The post NASA working toward April 1 launch of Artemis 2 appeared first on SpaceNews.

Activity at the volcano in the Philippines sent lava and pyroclastic flows down the volcano’s flanks and prompted evacuations in nearby communities.

The Starlink 17-31 mission is SpaceX’s 26th mission supporting its broadband internet satellite constellation so far in 2026. Liftoff from pad 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base is scheduled for 7:33:50 a.m. PDT (10:33:50 a.m. EDT / 1433:50 UTC).

The Starlink 10-48 mission will add another 29 broadband internet satellites to the company’s constellation in low Earth orbit. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is scheduled for 8:10 a.m. EDT (1210 UTC).

NASA announced today they are targeting April 1 at 6:24 pm Eastern Daylight Time for sending the Artemis II crew around the Moon. In preparation, their Space Launch System rocket […]

China’s Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission is entering flight hardware development, targeting a late 2028 launch to seek out biosignatures on the Red Planet. The post China’s Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission moves into spacecraft construction phase appeared first on SpaceNews.

The Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project (LBFD) is part of NASA’s effort to help enable new aircraft noise standards that are required to open the market to commercial supersonic flight over land. The federal government banned all civilian supersonic flights over land more than fifty years ago due to sonic boom noise. If new standards are established, the U.S. aviation […]

NASA astronauts will conduct a pair of spacewalks beginning Wednesday, March 18, outside of the International Space Station to prepare for the installation of two roll-out solar arrays. Experts from NASA will preview the spacewalks during a news conference at 2 p.m. EDT, Monday, March 16, at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Watch […]

The Integrated Aviation Systems Program (IASP) conducts research and integrated, systems-level demonstrations in a flight environment to prove, mature and transition them into future aircraft and systems. The program aims to determine feasibility and accelerate development of less mature technologies, and for more mature technologies, execute highly complex flight demonstrations to prove and accelerate technology […]

New facility to support electronics and software development for missile defense and space programs The post Voyager opens defense and space tech hub in Long Beach appeared first on SpaceNews.

With the first images from the spacecraft now in hand, the team behind NASA’s Star-Planet Activity Research CubeSat, or SPARCS, is ready to begin charting the energetic lives of the galaxy’s most common stars to help answer one of humanity’s most profound questions: Which distant worlds beyond our solar system might be habitable?  Initial, or […]

A Vienna-based startup has raised $4 million to scale a software platform that generates synthetic satellite data for training AI models to detect environmental and operational risks. The post Another Earth raises $4 million to boost AI training with synthetic satellite data appeared first on SpaceNews.

Firefly Aerospace completed a successful return to flight on Wednesday, March 11, bringing their Alpha rocket back online after a mishap in April of last year.

Stars peek through the dusty, winding arms of NGC 5134, a spiral galaxy located 65 million light-years away, in this Feb. 20, 2026, image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument collects the mid-infrared light emitted by the warm dust speckled through the galaxy’s clouds, tracing the clumps and strands of dusty gas. […]

Galaxies carry the imprints of past encounters. When they pass near one another or collide, gravity pulls their stars into long tails, thin streams, and faint shells – features that preserve the history of these dramatic events. Thanks to deep, high-resolution images from the Euclid space telescope, an ESA (European Space Agency) mission with critical contributions from NASA, we can now see these delicate structures more clearly than ever before in unprecedented numbers.

In this episode of the SpaceNews Space Minds podcast, host David Ariosto talks with Jonathan Cirtain, CEO and President of Axiom Space. They discuss the challenges — and wonders — […] The post The new wave of industry coming for the LEO frontier appeared first on SpaceNews.

Download PDF: Efficient Large Displacement/Large Rotation Dynamic Simulations Using Nonlinear Dynamic Substructures Utilizing reduced-order dynamic math models (DMM) in linear system-level dynamic analyses is a well-known practice that enables extreme computational efficiencies. But what about nonlinear system dynamics? Reduced-order DMMs have found their way into contact dynamics. The engineer must look no further than the […]

Watch the replay of the CELESTE pre-launch media briefing. The briefing covered the mission details of the ahead of the inaugural launch of ESA’s Celeste LEO-PNT in-orbit demonstration constellation. The first two satellites are scheduled to lift off no earlier than 24 March aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from New Zealand.

The Denver-based satellite manufacturer says the acquisition supports its strategy of building an ‘integrated space ecosystem’ The post York Space acquires satellite propulsion manufacturer Orbion Space appeared first on SpaceNews.

Hyten has called for greater use of commercial technology and faster acquisition cycles The post Astranis taps retired Gen. John Hyten to lead advisory board  appeared first on SpaceNews.

SAN FRANCISCO – Mantis Space, a New Mexico startup planning a constellation to supply solar power to spacecraft, emerged from stealth March 12 with $10 million in seed funding. “We are building a constellation of satellites that deliver power directly to solar arrays that exist in the market today and bringing products to market that […] The post Mantis Space emerges from stealth with $10 million for solar-power constellation appeared first on SpaceNews.

At 7 a.m. EDT, the Northrop Grumman Cygnus XL spacecraft was released from the Canadarm2 robotic arm, which earlier detached the cargo spacecraft from the Earth‑facing port of the International Space Station’s Unity module. At the time of release, the station was flying about 260 miles over ______.

Live coverage of the departure of the Northrop Grumman’s uncrewed Cygnus XL cargo spacecraft from the International Space Station is underway on NASA+, Amazon Prime, and the agency’s YouTube channel. The spacecraft’s release from the robotic arm is scheduled for 7 a.m. EDT.

From the ESA Blogs.

Thales Alenia Space has awarded a contract to US-based Astrobotic to develop the wheels for the Multi-Purpose Habitation module, a mobile lunar habitat under development for the Italian Space Agency (ASI). In 2020, ASI and NASA signed a joint statement of intent to cooperate on the development of a lunar habitat that could support crewed […] The post Thales Alenia Space Selects US Provider to Develop Lunar Habitat Wheels appeared first on European Spaceflight.

Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket successfully returned to flight March 11, launching a technology demonstration mission more than 10 months after the rocket’s previous launch failed. The post Firefly Alpha returns to flight appeared first on SpaceNews.